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Thursday, August 28, 2014

Recently I read my way through the Qur'an in chronological order using this website and following the list on the right of that page which uses the Skeptics Annotated Quran. (Reviewed here.) (I used a Notepad file to write down each chapter number once I'd finished reading it). For the most part I found the Skeptics Annotated Quran to be very well done, and the notes make it more interesting and help to point out themes and problematic verses.

It's helpful to read the Qur'an in chronological order because then you get a better sense of the flow, and it's easier to see the progression in increasing violence in the latter stages of the Qur'an as Mohammad and his followers grew in numbers and power. There are very few peaceful verses in the Qur'an and those few that there are come earlier in the Qur'an, and are abrogated by later more violent verses. (To understand abrogation and the Qur'an this video is a must watch: The 3 Stages of Jihad.)

Anyone who thinks that Islam is a peaceful religion clearly hasn't studied the Qur'an carefully enough, and even a quick glance at the chart I've made below should make it obvious that the Qur'an is a very dark and violent book that is constantly threatening unbelievers with the doom of hell-fire, which will be eternal and ever increasing torment in the fires of hell. (See my blog post Misconceptions about Hell for a biblical comparison.)

It's been interesting to learn too that most Muslims have never read the Qur'an in their language and have very little understanding of what the Qur'an actually means. (daledamos.blogspot.co.nz/2006/10/majority-of-muslims-cannot-read-quran.html). And in the words of Usama Dakdok - the greatest insult to Islam is not to burn the Qur'an - the greatest insult to Islam is to read the Qur'an! (Usama is an expert in the Qur'an - see his website here - and note too his accurate English translation of the Qur'an that doesn't cover up or sugar coat the violence or problems in the Qur'an like all of the other English translations).

Again and again the Qur'an says that Allah hates unbelievers, and not once does the Qur'an say that people should love their enemies (as Jesus commanded us in the Bible). Whereas the Bible teaches that God loves even the prodigal (Luke 15), the Quran says that Allah "loveth not the prodigals." (Quran 7:31). (For more on this see this video: Does Allah Love Unbelievers). So there is nothing in the Qur'an to balance out the many many verses that call Muslims to hate, kill, and wage violent Jihad upon unbelievers.

The above ISIS "devotional" shows verses from the Quran - just a small sampling of the 109 verses of violence in the Quran coming from the "religion of peace". We call them radical Muslims or extremists, but really they are fundamentalist Muslims or true Muslims who are following the Qur'an faithfully to the letter.

Islam - the greatest killing machine in history

Between 250 million and 270 million people have been killed by Islam over the last 1,400 years. Isn't the Bible just as violent?

As you can see from the above chart (from Bill Warner's research on Political Islam), the political violence in the Qur'an is 10x more than the Bible. Passages with verses related to Old Testament political violence against gentiles is 34,039 words out of an Old Testament total word count of 632,633 which is 5.4% of the OT.
In comparison the Islamic trilogy (Qur'an, Hadith and Sira) have a whopping 328,000 words related to political violence by Muslims against kafirs (infidels).

In another chart from Bill Warner we find that 31% of the trilogy is devoted to jihad, and with the Sira (the biography of Muhammad) it contains a massive 67% of its content focused on jihad - violent war against kafirs.

Not only is the violence in the Qur'an 10x more than in the Bible but it's also far more dangerous because of the number of jihad verses that are open-ended commands for all time, whereas the Bible's commands for violence are all bound by contexts that make it clear that it's for then and not for today.Overview / Summary of Violence in the Qur'an

* 114 chapters in the Qur'an.
* 140 verses mention the Fire of hell.
* 221 verses mention the doom that awaits unbelievers.
* 50 chapters out of 114 refer to doom = 44% of chapters in the Qur'an refer to doom.
* 89 chapters mention either doom or hell or both (i.e only 25 chapters don't mention doom or hell).
* Of those 25 chapters that don't mention doom or hell, many of them have references to violence or the day of judgment.
* Only about 12 chapters are relatively benign and not mentioning violence in some form. (About 10% of the Qur'an).
* 90% of the chapters in the Qur'an contain messages of doom, hell, or violence for all non-Muslims.
* 109 verses that command violent offensive jihad against non-Muslims (See here)
* 164 violent jihad verses in the Qur'an (see here)
* 91 commands to obey and imitate Muhammad (who often waged offensive jihad - See the list here Note - some of the 91 commands are oblique as Muhammad is identified with Moses and Noah).

In summary - it's absurd that Islam is called a religion of peace. If that's your idea of peace then it's a very warped one. I encourage you to read the Qur'an for yourself so that you can be equipped to help dispel the myth that Islam is peace.